industry moves

Industry Moves: Rashied Akrum And Carina Rozendaal Join InstallFree

November 3, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

InstallFree today announced that long time Application and Desktop Virtualization veterans Rashied Akrum and Carina Rozendaal will join InstallFree as the Vice President EMEA and Senior Director of Sales & Marketing EMEA respectively.

Both Akrum and Rozendaal bring a tremendous amount of experience to InstallFree, having previously worked at Microsoft through the acquisition of Softricity in July 2006. Prior to the acquisition, they established and ran the EMEA Headquarters for Softricity for 4 years and were instrumental in creating the Application and Desktop Virtualization market in EMEA while developing a strong channel presence.

Akrum has over 21 years experience in IT leadership roles and has been successful in building European channels for new emerging IT technologies. He has extensive experience in sales, marketing, technical and management positions in software infrastructure and virtualization technologies including Softricity, Citrix, Terminal Server and MS Virtualization.

Rozendaal is a long time software virtualization pioneer having worked at Microsoft and established the EMEA market for Softricity with Akrum. She has extensive experience in the areas of sales, business development and marketing within infrastructure and virtualization technologies like Softricity, Citrix and Terminal Server. Rozendaal also brings her experience in channels in emerging technologies across Europe, Middle East & Africa with companies like CDG Europe, ASG Europe and Racal-Datacom.

Roger Baskerville Leaves Citrix / XenSource

November 2, 2008 by Kris Buytaert Leave a Comment

Roger Baskerville has left Citrix, where he started out as the Sales Director of Xensource EMEA , after the Citrix merger to become Regional Director Northern Europe Server Virtualization .

During his years at Xensource Roger was one of the first commercial pushers of Xen and later XenEnterprise.

Roger has now joined Vizioncore as Vice President for EMEA and he will be responsible for EMEA operations. He leads the sales, marketing and systems engineering teams based across the region. Baskerville has held a variety of senior channel focused EMEA sales leadership positions with both mature high tech organizations as well as start-up operations. Previous companies include LightPointe, Palm, Compaq and NCR. A seasoned industry speaker who is both technically astute and sales focussed, Baskerville brings with him a wealth of experience in virtualization and international sales.

Earlier this year Quest fully acquired VizionCore as part of their journey into virtualization, after earlier
already owning a smaller part of the company. VizionCore then was described as the leading provider of disaster recovery and other products for virtual infrastructure management.

Today their website reads
“VizionCore Inc. provides software that helps organizations safeguard and optimize their virtualized environments and allows them to extract the maximum return on their investment in the VMware platform. Vizioncore’s software products support essential IT strategies, including business continuity, high availability and disaster recovery.”

With this move Roger stays in the Virtualization world where he has worked for the past couple of years, however moving from a fully Open Source based technology to a back to a proprietary environment.

The bigger question however is .. who else will be leaving Citrix/ XenSource. and when ? XenSource has been with Citrix for about a year now .. maybe there are other people jumping ship.

Industry Moves: Promotions at Quest Software

October 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

After announcing that its board of directors has authorized a modified “Dutch auction” tender offer to repurchase between $135 million and $400 million of its common stock, Quest Software has announced some promotions as well.

The company has appointed Doug Garn as the company’s chief executive officer. Garn, who was also appointed to the company’s board of directors, will continue in his role as president. As CEO and president, Garn will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of Quest. He joined Quest in 1998 and has served as the company’s president since February 2005. Prior to that, he served as Quest’s vice president of worldwide sales.

The company has also announced that Vinny Smith has been appointed to the newly created full-time position of executive chairman of the company’s board of directors. In this role, Smith will be responsible for leading the strategic direction of Quest. As executive chairman, Smith will play an active role in managing Quest’s product direction and will continue to be responsible for Quest’s corporate development strategy. Smith joined Quest as a director in 1995 and was appointed chief executive officer in 1997. In 1998, he was appointed chairman of Quest’s board of directors.

Industry Moves: DataCore Promotes Christian Hagen to VP Sales for the Americas & EMEA

October 8, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

DataCore Software has appointed Christian Hagen as its new Vice President of Sales for the Americas & EMEA. Hagen, the former Vice President of Sales and Partner Development EMEA, is now also responsible for all DataCore sales and channel activities in the Americas. With this appointment, DataCore aims to leverage its European distributor and channel partner programs in the US as well as in Europe. The partner enablement model has proven itself in Europe, where it has successfully empowered distribution and reseller partners.

During his tenure as Vice President of EMEA Sales and Partner Development for DataCore, Christian Hagen led DataCore’s EMEA business to record growth rates by nearly doubling annual sales and doubling the number of business partners on a yearly basis. The 46-year-old German successfully broadened the company’s market footprint with a two-tier distribution model – targeting distribution partners and value-added resellers (VARs) with strong technical expertise in virtualization markets. The company has also aligned its sales and support organization in order to better enable channel partners to multiply their business with virtual platforms like Citrix XenServer, VMware, Microsoft VS, Oracle VM, Sun VM, Virtual Iron, etc., in conjunction with DataCore storage virtualization.

Christian Hagen joined DataCore Software in 2000 and directed the company’s activities in Central Europe from 2004 on. In 2007 he was appointed Vice President of EMEA Sales and Partner Development and extended the successful central European approach into the European markets, as well as the Middle East and Africa. Christian Hagen has 20 years experience in the storage industry and is recognized as expert in virtualization, storage management, business continuity and disaster recovery. He held various positions in sales, engineering, support, and business development at Deutsche Bank, Sterling Software, Computer Associates and IBM.

Industry Moves: Kathryn Rose Joins Hyperic As CFO, Ron Oglesby Leaves Glasshouse for Dell

October 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Open source web infrastructure management provider Hyperic (earlier coverage) today announced it has named Kathryn Rose as chief financial officer (CFO). In this newly created position, Rose will be responsible for the company’s financial operations plan as well as being part of the executive team that sets strategic direction.

Rose brings nearly 20 years expertise in financial management and capital markets at both large public companies and smaller, privately held startups—much of that in the tech sector—to Hyperic. Her CFO-level roles include successful tenures at global consumer products company Leapfrog as well as at Autodesk, Sage Systems and Foresight Energy Company. She has also held high-level financial positions at Merrill Lynch and Chevron. Rose’s work ranges from raising $200 million in venture capital, to tight integration of financial and strategic functions across global enterprises to increase profitability.

Rose holds an MBA in finance from the University of California at Berkeley, and a BA from the University of Texas, Austin.

Glasshouse Technologies has lost its Director of Virtualization and Architecture Services, Ron Oglesby, after just one year. Oglesby co-authored two best seller books about VMware Infrastructure: VMware ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide and VMware Infrastructure 3: Advanced Technical Design Guide and Advanced Operations Guide. Rumor has it Oglesby was hired by Dell.

Industry Moves: Christopher Page (Vizioncore) and Patrick Clark (Expert Server Group)

September 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Vizioncore today announced Christopher Page as the company’s new Director of Product Management, reporting to company VP of Products and Support, Jason Mattox.

Prior to joining Vizioncore, Page spent 18 years in product management and engineering positions at companies such as Motorola, Macrovision and Navteq. His diverse experience includes managing the development of software, data content and hardware products. Page’s accomplishments include helping companies win new business, developing new products and marketing complex technologies.

Page also holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management as well as an MS in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Expert Server Group also announced the appointment of Patrick L. Clark as Chief Operating Officer. As COO, Clark will be responsible for developing and overseeing Expert Server Group’s growing sales force and customer relations programs.

Clark’s extensive background spans the history of Internet and networking technology, starting early on as a co-founder and VP of Sales and Marketing at Interlan, one of the first local area network product companies, and continuing through his most recent role as head of Worldwide Sales for Converged Access, a leader in VoIP Application Performance Management.

Clark also brings the experience of building worldwide sales organizations. Prior to Converged Access, he was head of North American sales and service at Phone.com, a leading provider of wireless Internet infrastructure software to global telecommunications companies. Before that, he was the vice president of worldwide sales with Paragon Software, a leading provider of data and content synchronization software for the major wireless handset vendors and global telecommunications companies that was acquired by Phone.com in early 2000. Prior to Paragon Software, Clark was vice president of worldwide sales at Software.com, a leading provider of Internet/Intranet infrastructure software to global Telcos and Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). Previous to Software.com, Clark was EVP worldwide sales and field marketing for Computervision, a leading provider of CAD/CAM software and services where he was part of the successful turnaround of this $800 million software company.

Clark held significant roles in startup and high growth companies throughout his career. First, as the co-founder of Interlan, an early pioneer in the local area networking product space, and then serving as EVP and general manager with Microcom, a leading manufacturer of protocol modem, internetworking bridges/routers and communications software.

Clark also was a general partner of Windspeed Ventures, a seed round and early stage investment group in software and communications infrastructure companies. Clark sat on the advisory board for privately held companies Bitfone, Esmertec and Vividon.